The State of the Escape Room Industry: 2018

Read about the state of the escape room industry and get a unique perspective from one escape room owner in our guest post on HowToStartAnLLC.com.

What, exactly, is the state of the industry, considering that escape games are relatively new but rapidly expanding? (Statistics collected mid-2017 revealed 2,800 games in the world — today there are that many in the US alone.)

Is there a natural trajectory that the industry shall inevitably follow? Or is the escape games phenomenon simply a “whatever happens, we’re having fun while it lasts” star shooting through the constellation of business?

Here are some hard questions: are escape rooms here to stay, or are they destined to vanish just as pool halls and penny arcades did? If they stay, for how long? What will they be? Will they continue as they are, or will they evolve?

About the Author

Charles Bechtel is at present the owner and operator of Escape Rooms PHX in Mesa, AZ. He is 65, married to Manuela Mary Bechtel, with two grown daughters and three granddaughters. Professionally, Charles has been a published author of numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction, owned and operated his own publishing & consulting firms, and even had owned a charter fishing operation out of Cape May, New Jersey. Click here to check out some of the books authored by Charles.

During his consulting days, he specialized in developing new products for the newspaper industry and developing what had then been the industry-altering desktop publishing replacement for many composition firms.

He has years of marketing experience, wearing many hats on both the production and administrative sides of publishing.